Pictures

A flashback of our first impressions in the jungle 2 years ago.

These pictures are from a disposable camera that has traveled cross country twice!  They are grainy and sometimes dark, but it does give you a pretty good idea of how Trent and Kay have been living.  I’ve titled these from the information that Trent and Kay have given us.

Our Plane Didn’t Crash

We made it to the jungle. We’re excited to be here and see a lot of our team that we haven’t seen in several months. I’m not sure how often I’ll get to blog in the three weeks that we’re here, so I’ve scheduled some of my favorite blogs from our own training in the jungle almost two years ago to be posted over the next few weeks. Enjoy!

A Little Fight Left

In the last day and a half, after returning to South America, Jack fell off the bed and hit his head on the cement floor, we had a day of cultural clashes to try to get the airline to change our tickets rather than charge us $400 more for new tickets, we got in an accident in a taxi, and then discovered that someone had stolen our debit card and had overdrawn our account.

Let me start at the beginning. We were excited to get back to South America and get back into our work. But we had no idea it would be this hard. For one thing, we are not home, we are in Lima, Peru, planning to head out to the jungle to teach at training. We arrived here from the States at about 11 p.m. with, of course, our maximum amount of luggage and had to haul that stuff all over the city. In the middle of that is when we think the card was stolen.

Things are just so much more difficult here. Picture life hopping in and out of taxis in crazy traffic, having to haul your luggage around without a personal vehicle, getting overcharged at dingy hotels, and trying to reason with an airline attendant whose cultural reasoning is completely different from yours. Add to that a baby and you have to live in a world with no changing tables, no sugarless baby food, little hot water access, and no functioning high chairs in restaurants. In the end you have two grumpy adults and one dirty baby.

We finally packed up what we needed for the jungle, rearranged our luggage, and were headed out the door to catch our flight. Jack has just begun to roll around quickly and being the rookie parents we are, we had left him in the middle of the bed. Trent said “Let’s go,” and then immediately after Jack fell off the bed hitting his head on the hard cement floor. We missed our flight of course.

Today we had to run all over the world trying to get all that the airline needed to change our tickets. When we finally had it all we were in a taxi on the way to the airline office for the third time. Our taxi driver tried to make a crazy u-turn and was hit by a van. We are all okay, but very shaken up. At one point in the day we got money out of the ATM and our bank told us we were overdrawn. When we finally got home, we checked only to find out that someone had stolen Trent’s debit card and had been using it.

If this isn’t spiritual warfare, it’s a lot of crazy coincidences. It’s interesting that it would happen now, but I remember the last family who worked in Bolivia before us telling us that they always had trouble getting back from the States. We’re tired, frustrated, and a little nervous about what is to come next. But when all these things happen at once, it kind of gives puts a little fight in us. We can see God’s hand in all of this and we trust Him. Please pray for us as we head out to the jungle to teach at our team’s training. Please pray for our mental, physical, and spiritual strength right now.

Good Read

One of the things I did on our vacation was read an autobiography titled Children of the Storm: The Autobiography of Natasha Vins. It is about a family, told from the point of view of the oldest daughter, who were persecuted for their faith during the communistic Soviet regime. It is a fascinating and easy read and I would highly recommend it.

It is amazing to see how God gave this family, even the young children, the strength and courage to withstand persecution with dignity.  The father of six spent years in hiding and years in prison. The family life was unstable, never knowing when dad would come home, get arrested, or perhaps be killed for preaching the gospel, and yet they persevered. The elderly grandmother also spent years in prison for her faith and showed such fortitude and determination. There is an amazing twist at the end (of course, a true one) that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Vacation Highlights

Some of my favorite moments from vacation so far. 

–We arrived really early in the morning and decided that our first stop would be McDonald’s (we can’t find breakfast sausage anywhere in Bolivia or Peru). Mom was so excited about everything that she wanted to take a picture of us in front of McDonald’s. “Wow, people are really going to think we’re from the sticks,” Trent said, “They’re gonna think we’ve never seen a McDonald’s.” When we got inside, the line was kind of long. Trent and I had been there for a while when we looked over at my family. Mom, dad, and my sister were making quite a scene over there, playing with Jack and snapping a million pictures. Later a lady walked over and said, “This must be your first grandchild.”

–Our 4-year-old nephew was looking at Jack for a while and finally said, “He has a big head.”

–Sunday we talked with and showed pictures to the kids’ Sunday school class. We were trying to explain how different life is for a Quechua kid than their lives are. But since Shepherd is a pretty small town, some of that didn’t quite work. When we told them they tend sheep, one boy said, “I see one of those everyday on the way to school.” When we said they eat lots of potatoes, one girl chimed in, “We just helped my grandma dig some of those up yesterday.” Things finally sunk in when we told them that Quechua kids only bathe once a week. But I think they were a little jealous about that one.

–Jack’s first trip to the beach. He really didn’t like the sand, especially when we didn’t let him eat it.

Packing!

The day has finally come to start packing for our vacation! It is so exciting. Of course, we have a million things to do and our guys are all in town, so Trent has been busy trying to get them set up. Tomorrow we fly to Santa Cruz. We’re planning to stay the night in a nice hotel to decompress a little before we are back in the U.S. Thursday afternoon we head to Lima, then on to an overnight flight to Texas. Here is a little bit of our schedule for those of you who might be in the areas where we will be visiting.

June 5-17 Shepherd, Texas (We will be at FBC Shepherd on June 7th)

June 17-29 San Marcos, Texas (We will be at FBC Martindale on June 21st)

We have a few scheduled excursions in there, but those are pretty much our plans. We’re trying to see as many people as we can at church on those Sundays so that we can spend some good quality time with our immediate families. See you soon!

Happy Birthday Trent!

Today is Trent’s 30th birthday. We ate cake with our church yesterday and we’re going over to some friends’ house tonight for dinner. All of our guys are back in town so we’ll stop by to see them afterward. It should be fun!

Party, Party, Party

Thanks for the comments on the last post. Maybe some more on that later. This past week has been one big party here in this part of Bolivia. One thing you need to know is that it doesn’t take much for Bolivians to want to have a party. We are constantly learning about something new that we are celebrating here. They celebrate with parades, concerts, and more parades. A friend of mine has a daughter in high school and she was required to go march in a parade on Sunday in her school uniform.

The reason for the celebration: On Monday when most of you were observing Memorial Day, Bolivia was celebrating 200 years of freedom from Spain. It all started here in Sucre, so the celebration has been talked about for years now and started over a month ago. This weekend I drove downtown to see a friend, which was crazy. Nearly all of the roads downtown were blocked, fireworks were going off, people were everywhere. It was stressful and exciting all at the same time.

Now today is Mother’s Day here in Bolivia (it is always May 27th). Just when they got all of the trash cleaned from Monday, they are having parades and parties for the moms. I already got some special treatment for my first Mother’s Day a couple of weeks ago but I’m thinking about trying to milk it a little more today.

On a completely different note, I got my camera cord working, so here are some pictures of our crate.

The big crate our boxes were in

There are boxes all over our house

It was fun opening everything. We had forgotten what all was in there.

The Pursuit of Happiness

I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately. How important is our happiness? I hear people talk about it all the time. “I’m just not happy anymore,” or “I’m happier now than ever.” The former implies that something needs to change and the latter implies that you are doing something right. So that brings up the question in my mind, how important is our happiness in relation to the purpose of our lives? 

In my opinion our culture has become obsessed with happiness. It says it right there in our Declaration of Independence. But is that all that life is about for me, my happiness? What about sacrifice, selflessness, courage, and redemption? Is it possible to be doing what is right and not be happy at the same time? 

I was talking to a friend about this the other day and she said, “But doesn’t that desire come from the Lord. Maybe we are looking for happiness in all the wrong places and it can only be found in Him.” I have since thought about that comment a lot. Yes, I definitely think we always find joy and contentment in the Lord, but I’m still not sure about constant happiness. If we are being obedient to God but are unhappy, does that mean that something is wrong? I just don’t think so.

I’m really opening up this topic to see what you think. How much should happiness affect our decisions?

Our Crate is Here!

One of the great benefits our mission offers us is the option to send a crate of our stuff from the U.S. to our new overseas home. Over two years ago we carefully packed, labeled, and obsessed over our stuff. The allowance was judged by size, not weight, so we put the heaviest things in there: mostly tools, books, and dishes. When we took the boxes to the crating company, the trailer was so heavy that it broke the hitch!

We were in Peru and Ecuador for a while before coming to Bolivia and then we had to wait until we had our residential visas before requesting that our crate be shipped. With all of the political problems going on in Bolivia and considering how long it took to get our visas, I told myself we might never get our stuff. But that didn’t keep me from stubbornly holding out on buying things that I knew were in there. For example, I have gone over two years without a mixer in a place where cooking from scratch is a daily event. I’m now going to have to find another way to exercise my arms. Our temporary spoons and measuring cups (which are surprisingly hard to find here) have broken but I held out. Trent didn’t buy tools that he needed because he had a ton (literally) in the crate. I just need this or that, we would say. “It’s in the crate,” became our mantra.

So, after over two years of not seeing our stuff, our crate showed up at our door! We were so surprised and excited to see that everything was exactly the way we packed it. We made a huge mess like it was Christmas morning. I had all of my clothes and shoes strung out all over the floor and Trent immediately restrung his guitar and started playing it. It was so fun. 

I took some pictures but something weird is going on with our camera cord. Maybe we can post those later.

Thanks to all of you from Martindale Baptist who hid cards and letters inside of the boxes. We are slowly finding them and they are so encouraging to read. What a great surprise!